After A Fall
by Ilanala
Summary: Pride goes before a fall, but what comes after it?


If asked, Shishido would probably say that the most important thing in his life was tennis. It wasn't school, which he worked just hard enough in to get by. It wasn't his family; he was teenager, after all, and a particularly temperamental one at that, so his family drove him crazy more often than not. It wasn't his friends because he didn't really _like_ people most of the time, even those he called friends. He didn't have any other hobbies or interests worth mentioning. Tennis was the only thing he really put his heart into, so it stood to reason that that was what mattered most.

But the real answer was that what mattered most, what he would not have been able to live without was his pride. He'd always been proud (a less kind person might say egotistical), but since coming to Hyotei, he'd clung more tightly to that pride and become even more stubborn about it. He was surrounded by the children of some of Tokyo's richest and most influential families, people who had everything and made no secret of it. He had to believe he was special too or he would be nothing but a poor, pathetic boy these people deigned to associate with.

And it wasn't as though he had nothing to be proud of. He was good at tennis, one of the few members of the enormous Hyotei team good enough to be a regular. He was strong and fast and no one with eyes could deny that he was attractive (which was of no importance for tennis but definitely mattered off the courts). That was usually enough to make people respect him, and if it wasn't, well, he had no qualms about fighting. A good fight usually shut up anyone who dared to criticize him.

He would have been fine like that, content with his place and prepared to stomp over anyone who got in his way, if not for that bastard from Fudomine. It hadn't been enough for him to win the match; no, he had to crush his opponent. Shishido had done the same many times over to people who didn't have the arrogance to deserve it, but that didn't stop him from being angry. He was furious with Tachibana and even more pissed off at himself for...well, for a lot of things. For being a hypocrite, for underestimating his opponent, for not being good enough to win, and most of all for not having anything to fall back on when he didn't have tennis.

It wasn't that he couldn't play tennis anymore. It was just that he'd been a regular, and his pride wouldn't let him give up and go back to being just another face in the crowd. He earned the respect of many of his teammates by putting so much effort into earning his regular spot back, knowing full well that no one had ever successfully done so, but he wouldn't have understood why if they'd told him. He did it because he had no choice. He had to be a tennis player because that was what he was, and if he was going to be a tennis player, he had to be one of the best: a regular. It didn't matter if he had virtually no chance, nor did it matter how badly he beat up his body in his intense training. He simply had to do it.

Pleading to Sakaki on his knees, cutting off his hair: it was all very melodramatic, but nobody who had ever seen Atobe take the court could argue that Hyotei didn't approve of melodrama. It made sense, anyway; Shishido was showing that he was throwing away his vanity and at least some of the arrogance that had put him in this position in the first place. He was showing that the only thing that mattered to him was tennis, and that he would do anything if only he could be a regular again. Besides, all that mattered was that it worked and he got his spot back.

Nobody with any sense of self-preservation would tell him, but the loss to Tachibana had been good for Shishido. He was every bit as proud as before, but it was a different sort of pride. He'd lost much of his vanity, as evidenced by the way he kept his hair cropped short, and his untempered arrogance had matured into the kind of self-respect that comes from knowing you've fought to be where you are. He didn't have to storm around like he had something to prove because he _had_ proven his worth, as much to himself as anyone else. In the end, maybe that was worth the struggle.


End file.
